comments

1. Sheila Ryan on June 13th, 2010 at 10:50 pm

   Songs. Sausages. Ay-ep.

2. Sheila Ryan on June 14th, 2010 at 12:00 am

   I have to be at work early because I have to light and heat the earth.

3. Sheila Ryan on June 14th, 2010 at 12:07 am

   And a crashin’ blow from a big right hand sent a Loosiana fella to the Promised Land.

4. walt on June 14th, 2010 at 5:59 am

   “His family had butchered hogs, with the young Dean whacking them over the head with the blunt end of an ax.”

   This is an awesome sentence. Not many obituaries include the words butchered, whacking and ax.

5. Michael Smith on June 14th, 2010 at 7:11 am

   Pork!

6. Kelsey Parker on June 14th, 2010 at 7:14 am

   Ooo, nicely done.

7. Daryl Scroggins on June 14th, 2010 at 8:40 am

   Walt–Yes, what a sentence! You can sort of see him wearing that trademark grin of his as he bangs a skull between the ears.

   I think I have told this story here before (I think I have said everything twice by now), but when I was about ten I went on a hike with a church youth group–Pioneer Boys–that included a tour of a nearby Jimmy Dean Sausage processing plant. It was on a weekend and the plant was not running, so an employee gave us the corporate tour, showing all of us little boys and two Bible-toting youth ministers the process of killing and parting out hogs. We, of course (the boys), begged for the actual startup of the whole line–or at least the part involving the electric stun gun, the pneumatic blast to the skull, and the dragging hook mechanism. The whole thing was a religious experience, of course, since it was the church showing us these things. We then all went to an area of bottom land beside the plant, near a fouled creek, where we built many campfires in order to kick burning logs into the water. The youth ministers secluded themselves for prayer most of the time we were there, coming out only once to prevent us from chopping down a large tree with hatchets.

8. Dave Vogt on June 14th, 2010 at 8:49 am

   It’s hard to chop down something much thicker than a foot in diameter with a hatchet. One wants for something powered by a combustion engine, loud noise, the fumes, flying sawdust, an upward stroke.

9. from the comments : clusterflock on June 14th, 2010 at 8:59 am

   [...] Daryl Scroggins: I think I have told this story here before (I think I have said everything twice by now), but when I was about ten I went on a hike with a church youth group–Pioneer Boys–that included a tour of a nearby Jimmy Dean Sausage processing plant. It was on a weekend and the plant was not running, so an employee gave us the corporate tour, showing all of us little boys and two Bible-toting youth ministers the process of killing and parting out hogs. We, of course (the boys), begged for the actual startup of the whole line–or at least the part involving the electric stun gun, the pneumatic blast to the skull, and the dragging hook mechanism. The whole thing was a religious experience, of course, since it was the church showing us these things. We then all went to an area of bottom land beside the plant, near a fouled creek, where we built many campfires in order to kick burning logs into the water. The youth ministers secluded themselves for prayer most of the time we were there, coming out only once to prevent us from chopping down a large tree with hatchets. [...]

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